Invent Your Own Computer Games with Python, 4th Edition

Interest is the best teacher. That is why I choose this book to teach my sons Python. The book is well written. My teenage son followed it to learn Python and build a few games in Python. I will guide my son to continue to learn Python with the book as a reference. I highly recommend it for kids and interested adults to learn programming in Python.

This book is a fun way to learn Python programming by teaching the language elements by writing games. From simple statements, using the debugger, designing programs logically with flowcharts, processing a main event loop, to incorporating player-missile graphics and sound, this books provides a good introduction to Python by building games and providing insights into how to build your own games.

Good coding book

I'm using this book to teach programming to my 13 year old. Like many kids his age, he's really into games and that interest has led him to want to learn how to program. So, this book is a perfect lead in. Basically, you copy the code for the game and then the author explains step-by-step what the code does. While that is good, it is also incomplete. As boring as it is, I feel like he needs to write his own smaller "toy" programs in order to really get the concepts. I suppose I could (and will) make up for this by coming up with exercises to do this, but it would have been nice, if the author had included some himself. So, I like a lot about this book, however, I feel it is incomplete without such exercises, and so will give it four stars instead of five.

"Invent Your Own Computer Games with Python" is a truly fantastic book. It goes far beyond just teaching game creation; it lays a solid foundation in so many fundamental programming topics that are essential for writing any kind of software, not just games. You really learn the core concepts needed to succeed. However, the way it uses game development to teach these concepts is definitely the best part! It makes learning engaging and practical. After working through this book, I genuinely feel equipped to create a huge range of projects, perhaps even anything I can imagine building. Honestly, this was the best purchase I've made in a long time, and that's saying something because I'm not usually a huge fan of reading! If you want to learn Python and programming in a fun, hands-on way that delivers real results, I highly recommend this book. It truly empowers you to start inventing your own creations.

I just finished reading "Invent Your Own Computer Games with Python", and it's my new all-time favorite book for beginners who want to learn how to program. Al's outdone himself with this one. He does an incredible job of teaching the reader how to program in Python from scratch; whenever he comes to a concept that the reader may not be familiar with, he explains it clearly and thoroughly using simple English, and then demonstrates why the concept is useful. The writing in this book is tight, engaging, entertaining, and just seriously impressive, and the projects are super fun too. I particularly liked the Tic-Tac-Toe project: I thought it was really clever to have the reader implement an AI for one of their games so early on in the book, instead of burying something fun like that in a later chapter. I don't know if Al's gotten way better at writing over the past few years, or if he's gotten a great editor, or some combination of the two; but whatever the cause, this book really shines. When I read his book "Making Games with Python & Pygame" (published in 2012), I found that he sometimes explained concepts using frustratingly vague language, or introduced them in an order that bothered me, and I also noticed a few typos and bugs in that book's prose and code; I found basically zero such issues in "Invent Your Own Computer Games with Python". The only main thing I wish he'd change is that he uses mixedCase for his variable and function names, but snake_case is the naming standard in Python programs (documented in PEP8). It's not obvious to me why he prefers mixedCase, and this seems like something that shouldn't have survived to the fourth edition of this book. All in all, though, this is a problem I'm more than willing to overlook, given how otherwise excellent this book is. From now on, whenever a friend asks me what the best way is of learning to program, I'm going to point them directly to this book. Keep up the great work, Al!

I love video games im learning blender substance and so much more to better make my own assets but this book helps me with the basics with python games im usually into Unity or Unreal but I can say this has spread a new light on game development using this book

I'm a programmer and I'm teaching Python to my 7-year-old son. I decided to start with this book. It took us over a year to get through all the chapters. My son typed in all the code for each chapter without copying and pasting. After that I read the chapter to him, explaining the code. Then he had fun playing and modifying the games! My son's review is below: -------------------------- Dear Mr. Sweigart, I really enjoyed the games in your book. There are many ways of modifying the games, like in the dodger game, you can make it so that every time your score gets to 1000, the baddies fall faster by 1. Also, you can change all the images and music to be like Zelda and you can make it 2 players. In Sounds and Images, you can make another food that makes you smaller. I like the improved hangman from chapter 9 because it has different levels of difficulty. Please continue to write more books on this topic.

Quizás hecho en falta más programas con entorno gráfico.Al final trata sobre pygame. Por lo demás muestra los programas de forma didáctica y amena

Bought this for my son who is in high school. Good to see him stuck to this book and coding on his own. Python is crucial in today’s context and hopefully his love for code grows further. Partly thanks to this book which teaches via a game-like narration.

Extremely useful and much much better than all the others I have tried. It is carefully arranged so that progression and additions to any initial code can be clearly followed - simply by numbering lines of code and using bold print. This makes it SO much better other books that claim to be for beginners. One drawback that it does share with its competitors is the absence of a distinct and obviously different font for code words and lines of code. As printed, the difference is too slight unless concentration is high. However I still rate it very highly.

Got here on time and in good condition. Looking forward to reading it.

I had an excellent experience with Rarewaves-USA; they shipped my order promptly and everything arrived in perfect condition. The book "Invent Your Own Computer Games with Python" is fantastic. The quality of the book exceeded my expectations and I am thrilled with my purchase. It really doesn't get any better than this! Highly recommend both the seller and the book to anyone interested in programming or game development. Truly a great find!